> -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > On Behalf Of Jon LaBadie > Sent: Friday, October 20, 2006 7:50 PM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: General backup advice help? > > > On Fri, Oct 20, 2006 at 03:50:25PM -0700, Don Murray wrote: > > > > Hello list, > > > > I've been lurking on the list a few days (not really long enough to be > > opening my mouth, but here it goes). > > > > I am a relatively novice sysadmin looking for a better backup setup than > > our handcrafted scripts. Amanda looks interesting but I am worried that > > it will not necessarily solve my problem. So I was hoping to beg your > > indulgence for a moment and see if anyone has any advice for me. > > > > My main concern is that we have to be "up" round the clock these days as > > we have people connecting during their work day, 9 hours different from > > ours. So having major services disrupted in the middle of the night for > > backups doesn't seem a viable solution anymore, as it hits the other > > people in the middle of the day. [McGraw, Robert P.] The solution to this is to take a snapshot of the data you want to back up and back up the snapshot. Users continue to work without interruption and you get a good backup without any file changes during the backup. > > "Up" is less a concern to me than "connected". Are some of these > people working on laptops or other computers that are not accessible > to your backup server except at certain times? > > Let's assume not, that all are connected when you want to do backups. > > > > > We are a small business. We have 2 main linux servers each with about > > 200G to back up. Backing up a full 200G volume across the network takes > > about 7 hours currently. > > > > I understand from the documentation that Amanda will attempt to balance > > the time taken for backups through its scheduling process. However, it > > seems to me that when you have to do a level 0 of size X, you have to do > > it, and so you will take the full 7 hours. > > > > The bad news is that currently these systems are set up with the full > > 200G on single partitions. > > > > If you are willing to use tar as as your backup program (many, many > amanda sites do that) then there is not problem. You say you have > basically 400GB of data. The basic unit of backup for amanda is > called a "DiskList Entry" (DLE) after the name of a config file. > With tar as the backup program you can specify directory tree's > as a DLE rather than filesystems. So you could have a DLE for > /boot, /var, /home, /usr/local, /usr (without local), /opt, > /database, and one for / without all the others. This is done > by "including" or "excluding" files and directories in the DLE > config. Now with 16 DLE's from two systems (or even more is you > wish), amanda can spread the level 0's of those 16 items over > your dumpcycle (typically a week). So on a typical day, only > 2 or 3 of the DLEs will get a level 0 and on average your daily > backups will be 1/7th of your 400GB or about 60GB/day. > > -- > Jon H. LaBadie [EMAIL PROTECTED] > JG Computing > 4455 Province Line Road (609) 252-0159 > Princeton, NJ 08540-4322 (609) 683-7220 (fax)
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